Loaded with meaty trivia and tasty, bite-sized facts

mental_floss is proud to offer a delicious, hearty helping of brain-food that's sure to fire up your neurons and tantalize your synapses. Condensed Knowledge is a mouthwatering mix of intriguing facts, lucid explanations, and mind-blowing theories that will satisfy even the hungriest mind

Ingredients include:

5 tiny nations that get no respect - 4 civilizations nobody remembers - 5 classics written under the influence - 4 things your boss has in common with slime mold - 3 schools of...

Think of anything bad, from art heists to Genghis Kahn, and it's likely to be included in this wickedly smart and humorous guide to the seedy underbelly of basically everything. The brainiac team at "mental_floss," creators of the hit magazine and last year's Condensed Knowledge, have scoured the darkest, dirtiest corners of history and the globe to gather this ultimate collection of the bad stuff you're not supposed to know and you certainly never learned in school.

Organized by theme, with chapters for each of the seven deadly sins, the book includes feuds, plagiarists,...

Enlighten Up Already

Monet? Manet? Who can even tell the difference? Well, with the help of the newest mental_floss tome, you can Want to learn how to tell egg rolls from spring rolls, nuclear bombs from dirty nuclear bombs, or even how to tell an idiot from a moron (there's a real scientific difference)? Piece of cake Whether you're trying to impress your boss, your mother-in-law, attractive singles, or a pack of fourth graders (you know how they love semantics), mental_floss gives you all the tips and tricks to have you sounding like a genius.

Friends? Romans? Countrymen?
You never know whom you'll have to impress
at your next corporate shindig or keg party.

Whatever the target audience, mental_floss knows staring facedown into the punch bowl isn't the trick. In fact, that's exactly why we're handing you Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets--a totally effective, foolproof guide to starting and sustaining conversations on every topic under the sun. Want to wax wise about barbarians, socialist theory, and jazz musicians? What about Keynesian economics, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and James Joyce's...

Remember that time you bumped into Stephen Hawking at the clambake and his monologue on string theory went completely over your head? Man, was that awkward. Or remember the time you were at a party and someone asked, "Who knows how to perform open-heart surgery?" and you were the only one who didn't raise your hand?

Well, put all of that embarrassment behind you. Want to dazzle crowds with your wondrous knowledge of Shakespeare and surgeries? Want to learn to woo just like history's greatest minds? Well, start reading already The Genius Instruction Manual is a foolproof...